With the advent of cable television networks, cable customers have grown accustomed to receiving a variety of television programming from numerous broadcasting sources. In recent years, technology advances have enabled customers to receive an even greater variety of services through cable services networks. Modern cable services networks provide traditional video television programming, telephone services, high speed Internet access, electronic mail services, video-on-demand, information services, and the like.
Unfortunately, from time-to-time, consumers of cable services experience a loss of communications with their cable services provider. Losses of communications may be caused by a variety of problems. For example, a satellite downlink may be lost temporarily which causes a loss of communications across a vast service area. On the other hand, a coaxial cable may be damaged at a single home or other consumer location resulting in a loss of communications to a single consumer.
In order to provide quality cable services and to maintain customer satisfaction, cable services providers must strive to restore lost communications as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, prior methods and systems typically only provide a cable services provider with a rough understanding of the area of lost communications and very little insight as to the nature of a given services outage. For example, a cable services provider may be notified that a given node servicing 1,000 homes is experiencing services outages without any real-time information as to the particular locations or nature of the outages. According to some prior systems, the cable services provider must rely on calls from individual customers to learn of particular services outages. Under such circumstances, cable services providers often roll multiple technicians and service vehicles to respond to a given services outage when only a single technician and service vehicle is actually needed.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for providing real-time services outage information to a cable services provider that allows the provider to quickly determine the actual locations of particular outages, and that provides insight into potential causes of a given services outage.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.